As President Trump visits Arizona today, tough questions ought to surface for Senate candidate Martha McSally who has stood steadfastly with the President throughout the Covid-19 fiasco emanating from the White House. Specifically, she should be called upon to defend why she has allowed the President to divert $18 billion or more away from the coronavirus response towards construction of the President’s useless border wall which is endangering Arizona residents and communities along the border. As the President pushes to reopen the economy without sufficient testing and with continued deficits in supplies, PPE and hospital capacity, Arizona reporters and residents should be focusing on why McSally has not been a forceful advocate for Arizonans.
The following is a statement from Pili Tobar, Deputy Director of America’s Voice:
Sen. McSally wants to ride the Trump train back to Washington for a full term, but she needs to address the baggage the President carries with him and why she continues to support him over the well being of Arizonans. So when Trump comes to do photo ops in Arizona, McSally ought to be forced to answer some tough questions. First among them, where are the tests and the PPE that Arizona needs? We are the richest, most powerful nation in the world and yet Arizonans and Americans are dying because of this administration’s failures.
In Arizona, Trump diverted funds that could’ve been used to address this pandemic and instead used them to expand his vanity border wall project and step up construction without regard to the safety of Arizona border residents or construction crews. Hardest hit in the state and around the country are Native communities, where Trump, with McSally’s support, is prioritizing building the wall over addressing basic health and safety concerns. To add insult to injury, the President – with McSally’s blessings – is sending in teams of lawyers to border communities from San Diego to Nogales to Brownsville to accelerate the process of taking private land from border residents all in service of building a great big useless wall to aid McSally’s election and Trump’s reelection and coming at tremendous expense in lives and dollars.
For Arizona with an economy reliant on immigrant workers and cross border trade, the President’s efforts to leverage the Covid-19 crisis to advance his re-election and anti-immigration agenda will have real costs at the local level. Arizona families are vulnerable, whether they are immigrants or not, and the President’s actions and Sen. McSally’s acquiescence only makes the health crisis more severe and the economic recovery more distant and difficult.
